John Ivison: The test now for Canada — become the essential country the Liberals claim it to be

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G7 leaders summit in La Malbaie, Que., on Friday, June 8, 2018.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press file photo

The clash of political cultures in Brussels means we may be moving into a more dangerous new world

Just over a year ago in the House of Commons, global affairs minister Chrystia Freeland launched into a long exegesis of foreign policy in the Age of Trump with a question: “Is Canada an essential country at this time in the life of our planet?”

To ask the question was, of course, to answer it — there was much in the speech typical of the kind of self-congratulatory statements all Canadian governments make. But there was also a sense of urgency and anxiety based on what was already known about Donald Trump’s worldview.

International relationships that seemed immutable for 70 years were being called into question, Freeland said. The core notions of territorial integrity, human rights, democracy, respect for the rule of law and aspiration to free trade were under threat.

That demanded a response from Canada, she said. “The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course. For Canada, that course must be the renewal, indeed the strengthening, of the post-war multilateral order.”

It might have been considered just so much rhetoric had it not been followed the next day by a defence review that provided for a $62.3-billion cash injection into the military.

Trump’s election left the Liberal master plan in tatters. Their 2015 election platform had promised they would merely “maintain” defence spending. In their first two budgets they didn’t even do that, stripping away billions in capital spending on new equipment. But as Trump thundered about NATO allies being “free-riders,” they were forced to act.

The defence review — titled Strong, Secure, Engaged — promised a dramatic increase in spending on new equipment. The first fiscal year of the policy did not deliver, with the Department of National Defence unable to spend the money it was allocated. But if the money is disbursed as promised, it will quadruple annual spending on infrastructure and equipment. The Canadian Surface Combatant project to build new warships will see a $30-billion funding increase, while the money allocated for new fighter jets will rise by as much as $10 billion.

News out of Brussels, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is meeting NATO leaders this week, shows Canada’s defence spending will actually dip this year, to 1.23 per cent of GDP from 1.36 per cent last year (partly due to a retroactive pay increase for Canadian Forces members in 2017). This, despite the fact that Canada now lumps spending on veterans’ benefits, defence information technology, the budget of the Communications Security Establishment and Coast Guard ice-breaking into its defence calculations.

Trump has renewed his call for other countries to pay more into the Western alliance, saying the current system “just doesn’t work” for the U.S.

“Many countries in NATO, which we are expected to defend, are not only short of their current commitment of 2 per cent (which is low) but are also delinquent for many years in payments that have not been made. Will they reimburse the U.S.?” he tweeted Wednesday.

Trump is wrong in saying the 2 per cent figure is a “current commitment.” Rather, it was aspirational — NATO leaders meeting in Wales in 2014 agreed to meet the target “within a decade.”

But by releasing a defence review that does not get anywhere close to 2 per cent, Canada has tacitly admitted it has no intention of meeting that commitment.

New figures released by NATO Tuesday paint a stark picture. Canada sits 15th out of 29 countries when it comes to defence spending as a percentage of GDP, behind such military powerhouses as Norway, Montenegro and Portugal. The only countries hitting the 2-per-cent target are the U.S., the U.K., Greece and Estonia.

If Trump’s judgment of his allies boils down to this one number he’s unlikely to be impressed. NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg would not deny reports Wednesday that Trump has asked members to raise their contributions to 4 per cent of GDP — a number not even the U.S. has reached.

Yet, Canada has responded in a number of ways to the challenge Trump poses.

The defence review was a serious attempt to meet a second, less-well-publicized target — that alliance members spend 20 per cent of their defence budgets on new equipment, research and development.

As Canadian Global Affairs Institute senior analyst David Perry noted, the new policy will see the share of Canadian defence spending allocated to capital rise from 12-to-15 per cent over the last few years to 30 per cent immediately, and 43 per cent of all defence spending within seven years — if implemented.

“In historical comparison, the last time as large a share of Canadian defence expenditures were devoted towards kit and infrastructure, as Strong, Secure, Engaged envisions will happen was during the Korean War,” he said.

The issue of burden-sharing was on Trudeau’s mind as he spoke at the NATO Engages — Brussels Summit Dialogue conference on Wednesday. He delivered a defence of the alliance and made the case that it is the quality of output that matters rather than the quantity of input.

“You can try and be a bean counter but the fundamental question is: is what you are doing actually making a difference?” he said.

The argument is blatantly self-serving for countries not spending what they said they would, and yet Trudeau’s point about outputs has some validity. In the past couple of days, he has tried to reinforce it by committing additional troops to the NATO mission in Latvia and announcing Canada will assume command of a new training and capacity-building mission in Iraq. Defence spending has to be useful and in many countries it is not. More than one third of Belgium’s goes towards pensions.

If he is merely trying to galvanize spending by America’s allies, Trump could point to increased investment and claim victory. Stoltenberg said last year saw the biggest increase in defence spending across Europe and Canada in 25 years.

But it may be that Trump has no interest in preserving the alliance. A chilling scenario laid out by Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, suggests the next week could see a reshaping of the international order.

In Shapiro’s view, Trump wants to pull the U.S. out of NATO because he doesn’t believe in alliances and wants purely transactional relations with other countries. He said Trump’s trashing of allies is building up resentment among his supporters. “It’s a huge breach in the consensus American support for the alliance that has under-girded Western security of 70 years — and it won’t disappear when Trump does.”

As damaging is Trump’s “passionate desire for friendship” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “If (Trump) recognizes Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, if he seeks to tone down sanctions on Russia over its aggression versus Ukraine, watch out,” said Shapiro.

The nightmare scenario for all concerned is that Trump sabotages the NATO summit the way he subverted the G7 summit in Charlevoix last month, when he refused to sign the final communiqué and called Trudeau “meek and mild.”

Mercifully, Trudeau said he is not planning a one-on-one with the president — a meeting that would likely not improve relations.

Yet, as The Economist noted in its lead editorial this week, deterrence depends on political unity.

If Trump openly questions America’s commitment to Article 5, NATO’s mutual defence clause, it might torpedo the alliance, embolden Putin in the Baltics and see U.S. troops withdrawn from bases in Europe.

The Trudeau government responded to the initial threat of American isolationism by saying Canada would chart a sovereign course, investing in its military to help ensure the survival of the post-war multilateral, rules-based order.

The clash of political cultures in Brussels means we may be moving into a more dangerous new world. Canada may yet have to become the “essential country” its politicians have long claimed it to be.

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.